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A Russian army colonel who committed one of the most notorious murders in the
war in Chechnya was shot dead in Moscow yesterday.

Yuri Budanov was shot four times in the head as he stood by his car on one of
the capital’s main streets in an attack that bore all the hallmarks of a
contract killing. Colonel Budyanov was convicted of war crimes for
kidnapping and strangling Elza Kungayeva, an 18-year-old Chechen, in 2000 in
a case that shocked Russians and split the military hierarchy.

The assassin fled the scene of the lunchtime shooting in a car that police